The Devil's Backbone
by playingfree
Summary: A new war is approaching and the Tomorrow People scramble to prepare themselves. Friends will turn and enemies will become their only hope. [Rated T for violence and mild cursing. Possibly OOC. A/U. OC centred story. You have been warned!] (Collab with HailHathNoFury)


~ I don't own The Tomorrow People. ~

 **The Devil's Backbone.**

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Chapter One.

Watching from the other side of the room, unable to move properly and vision impaired by black fuzziness around the edges of the eyes; he could hardly focus on the loudness that was the machine coming to a screeching stop from the surprisingly quick thinking of his teenage foe and he was more than a little helpless to stop him. In the minutes before the teen had decided to lose concentration on the very thought of sending him through the vortex, the old man had honestly thought he would be meeting a fate far worse than when that blonde bimbo had blown up his office because she disagreed with his methods, but he had been once again proven wrong when the teenager seemed to have become overwhelmed by the power gifted to him in that brief amount of time and had ultimately failed his plan to destroy his enemy once and for all; instead he had given him a splitting headache and a frightening amount of numbness throughout his body. He had tried screaming out when the teen had halted the machine he had been destined to power, but only noises that bordered gasping had managed to escape him; sounds that were easily lost within the screeching of the machine and before he could protest further, he found himself resting his head back down as an indescribable amount of dizziness overcame him—in the snippets that he caught before blacking out, he saw the teen leaving the room again...

...And the next time he woke up was to the familiar hum of teleportation, the sparkling particles blinding him further for a moment as he tried to focus on whoever had managed to break through several layers of stone without getting themselves caught by those who remained on his side. Though, he doubted any of those people remained as he had most likely been out of it for what felt like a while and the teen had probably convinced his friends to come back to their merry little group of clowns; he wondered if one of them had managed to locate him and were coming back to see if he was anywhere near the calibre that he had been prior to his fight with the teen. Any attempt to straighten up was ruined by the familiar feeling of telekinesis on top of him and a recognisable voice telling him to relax, though he only tensed further and earned an agitated groan; something about how they were going to be listening to another lecture if they attempted to knock him out again, so he should relax for both of their survival—he reluctantly started to relax due to the tone that the person carried, though his chest heaved with coughs when he felt the strong scent of smoke invade his nostrils and seep into his lungs. However, he didn't have much time to complain about the scent as he could feel himself seeping back into unconsciousness with a cloak of telepathic illusions keeping him under this time; though he felt their location changing before he fell into a deeper sleep, he seemed to be placed onto a surprisingly comfortable sofa and have a blanket pulled over him, before the person left again.

 _[ ]_

The Citadel was a dark place, full of despair and cruelty; no Tomorrow Person would ever willingly choose to go there unless, of course, it was to break somebody else out. There was the normal flash of colours and energy as a dark haired woman teleported into the very heart of the Citadel, the place they kept their most volatile and dangerous experiments. Generally, it was a heavily guarded facility and the chances of anyone so casually managing to get inside were slim to none, yet there she was, and without any apparent worry for the building she had managed to infiltrate with ease. The woman was short in stature with dark brown, almost raven coloured, hair and fair skin paired with piercing ice blue eyes. A stranger might think she was harmless due to her petite body and soft appearance, but they would be very sorely mistaken. She was as dangerous as it came and she stood with the confidence of someone without fear.

With leisure, she strolled among the small cubicles that many of the experiments called their home, showing only disinterest for most of the locked up men and woman. She hadn't come to release all of them, on the contrary, it was probably best that some of the more unstable Tomorrow People remain in their small glass prisons. No, this woman was only there for one reason, or rather, one person in particular. She had started to grow frustrated, unable to find what she sought, when three slow, soft knocks came from behind her. Before she even turned, the brunette knew she had found the person she had been looking for.

From inside another white container sat a young woman, her wavy red hair falling haphazardly over her shoulders and chest as she lay seated on the ground beside the door, one hand still resting on the glass she had previously knocked on. Her face was tilted down and hid by her hair, but the moment the brunette woman stepped up to the container the other woman's head snapped in her direction, fiery eyes locking onto cold blue. Freckles dotted her pale skin and dark shadows had formed beneath her eyes; at one time she had probably once been very pretty, though obviously the Citadel had drained much of the life from her. It was plain to see by the emotionless mask the redhead wore that the scientist had tried to break her spirit with their experiments, though the burning emotions that raged in her amber eyes showed their failure to do so. She was still a fighter and the dark haired woman knew it; if she had believed the redhead too far gone then she wouldn't have bothered to come here. Nothing was said as both women eyed each other, quietly taking in the appearance of the other person with scepticism and slight surprise. It was amazing how much you could know about someone yet still be astonished by the way they actually looked upon first meeting face to face, though that was the commonality of Tomorrow People like them, of people linked so strongly that no emotion or thought was ever truly hidden from each other. Finally, the amber-eyed woman gave a very soft scoff of irritation before making a very simple statement that, oddly enough, managed to amuse her dark haired companion.

"You're late, Megan."

 _[ ]_

Sirens howled through the dark corridors that had been hosed down with several layers of water to rid the concrete of infectious bacteria and germs alike, cameras captured the masked two as they ran together; one carrying a backpack that contained an important object that could turn the tide of this battle if destroyed or tweaked with, while the other carried a simple death wish in their mouth—lit by a lighter used to start a fire within another room to distract the agents while they placed some distance between each other. Taking place maybe a month or two after the incident within the Citadel and only a few hours after the rescue of the almighty Founder, the two women weren't experiencing the best of each other at the moment and instead had strongly disagreed when it came to their priorities tonight; while the shorter of the two had been off infiltrating Ultra at the very last minute due to rumours of a defeat that would last centuries in history, the taller had been forced to sit at a rather disgusting bus stop while she waited for her flat mate.

Maybe half an hour or so after their agreed time, the brunette had returned with a grim look on her face and a fresh joint between her lips; an argument had found itself between the pair and they had arrived at their location in a fit of agitation. More rumours would be spread if their allies found out the identity of the man that had distracted Megan from her very simple task of keeping an eye on her flat mate as they infiltrated a building that was non-existent to the rest of the world; an ironic role for the short brunette, who was often the one who needed to have someone watching over her due to the amount of ridiculous things she did while under the influence. Regardless of the irony of the situation, the redhead still remained angry at Megan for placing such a man higher on their list of priorities than their assigned mission; glaring furiously at her when she hopped the iron gates that would often be found in a subway station, alerting the building that there was an intruder due to subtle scanning machines embedded within the metal boxes—glaring harder when the brunette refused to take their task seriously and instead wandered off down another corridor without a care for the map that had been given to them by a friend.

However, when the redhead finally caught up to Megan and grabbed her by the shoulder to drag her in the other direction; they had already been at their destined location and Megan had been grinning like a Cheshire Cat who was beyond victorious in an impossible battle. Once they had retrieved their item from where it was tightly contained within a glass case in a room filled with deadly distractions, things had gotten a little messier; agents had started flooding through the corridors with firearms that contained both lethal bullets and sedatives—the two women had been forced to make a speedy exit and that's exactly how they managed to land a spot in the bad books of all of their close friends. Bringing up the rear with telekinesis that rivalled the pipsqueaks that the governmental officials had been terminating beforehand was Megan, stopping both bullets and darts alike while also exhaling smoke from her mouth as her flat mate hurried; neither of them were particularly sure why they were trusting the redhead with the directions, as she had been locked in a box mere months ago and hadn't spent much time in situations that required immediate directions or they would be facing certain death.

"What do you suggest we do, Megan?" The woman snapped, voice softer than that of when she was angry; but still holding a fearsome edge to it that seemed to only agitate the one she directed her question at—Megan had never been fond of people who expected all of the answers to magically appear, especially when spoken in the way that the redhead often voiced. The tension and pressure was already high enough to make Megan begin doubting her ability to think, she didn't need her flat mate's annoying voice to add to that grating feeling; she took a drag of her joint and shoved another wave of agents back with a forceful push. "We should have stuck to the map—"

"The map would have gotten us killed immediately." Megan interrupted angrily, adjusting the mask from where it had fallen around her neck so that it wasn't immediately suffocating her; she eventually turned on her heel and raced past her flat mate, making sure to grab the struggling redhead by the wrist as she did so to guide her through one of the many doors that they had passed through in the past hour. Upon racing through the door, they found themselves in a much more open space with staircases on either side of them; ones that spiralled both upwards and downwards in a confusing pattern that they might have lingered on to debate the shape if they hadn't been forced to immediately close the doors behind them upon entering, shoving their entire body weight up against the cold metal as agents slammed their own onto the other side. "We should split up."

Although her expression remained neutral, the redhead expressed a tone that screamed she was horrified, "Excuse me?" Megan only shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly as she struggled to hold her ground against the force on the other side of the door; even with the use of telekinesis to add to the weight on their own side, both women were struggling and they both knew it would be difficult to lose these agents unless they took some of the risks that Megan often suggested with very little care for the situation or moment. Before she could continue interrogating the brunette for more details on her plan, Megan had already broken away from the door while shouting something about claiming the bottom floor as she raced down the steps; the redhead was unsure of how to proceed with the moment, though she quickly found herself sprinting up the steps on the other side.

Minutes passed before the telekinesis ebbed away from the door and allowed the agents to race into the room; though it was emptier than their social life at this point and they were left a little dumbfounded as they looked around for the two women. It took them several minutes, longer than absolutely necessary, to realise that nobody had been in the room for maybe ten or so minutes and their slowness had most likely given these thieves an extra ten minute head start; they would most likely be out of the building within the time it took the government officials to locate and catch up with them. Orders were barked back and forth until finally, the team split off into two sections upon learning that the two hadn't remained together—a clever plan to divide the strength of a full squad, most likely—and had instead taken off through separate corridors that would essentially lead to the very same route if the two women kept running in a specific direction; the smaller of the two had gone downstairs and had slowed her sprint into a soft jog, while the redhead had taken the upstairs route and hadn't stopped running for the entire twenty minutes she had been separated from her partner.

Since the redhead had been carrying an important artefact that had been helping the government in their new war against the Tomorrow People, they sent the most men after her and then sent the men who had been having difficulties with the short brunette for a long period of time after the more relaxed one. As they were catching up to the pair, information on the women finally came through and those leading their teams were more than a little surprised by the identities; they seemed to be following the alleged daughter of one of the founding men of Ultra, Megan White, and the woman who had mysteriously disappeared from the Citadel several months prior to the downfall of Ultra—a redhead who was frighteningly dangerous and named Robin, though not much else could be found on the pair. Regardless of the lack of further information, the agents knew that this was going to be an interesting story to tell their co-workers at some point in the future; they would be _boasting_ about it for several years to come, if that showed the rarity of a mission like this, and the story would most likely become an incredible example to prove the power of the government. Well, that's what they wanted to imagine, anyway.

 _[ ]_

"Let's split up," The redhead grumbled to herself in a mocking copy of Megan's voice as she took the stairs two at a time, already huffing slightly from running nonstop to try and escape her pursuers. After escaping The Citadel she had been trying to build up some muscle and stamina to keep up with Megan, but these missions just seemed to get longer and more strenuous every time. "Because that's always a brilliant damn plan." She was none too pleased by her partner's idea of a 'plan', which involved a great deal of making it up as they went. Of course, Megan had a great tactical mind and often devised some of the most impressive plans, though Robin was slowly starting to realise a lot of their missions were accomplished by what seemed to be pure luck or weirdly accurate foresight. Either way, the redhead wasn't happy improvising for such a dangerous mission such as the one they were currently on.

From below her, the stomping of boots on the stairs signified the approaching agents who were gradually starting to gain on her. "Why are they so in shape?" Robin quietly asked herself between tired pants, knowing she couldn't keep this up for much longer. Making a split second decision, the redhead chose to burst through one of the stairwell doors and onto an unmarked floor before taking off down the long hallway in front of her. It seemed the floor she had picked was used purely for storage because at the end of the long hallway was just a large open room filled with rows and rows of tall shelves stacked with everything from regular office supplies to mysterious crates containing any number of things. Just before Robin could escape into the maze of supplies to hide away until the men following passed by, the door behind her opened up and gunshots filled the hallway as the agents instantly spotted her. Quickly she disappeared into the tall shelves, trying to crouch down and remain unseen as the men followed her into the room at a quick pace. Robin cursed her unusual height, which was making it rather hard to hide behind the crates and shelves scattered throughout the large room while she dodged around the agents who were now spreading throughout the room. Finally, she made it into a secluded corner of the storage where she waited with baited breath while the agents searched the floor, their boots scuffing along the ground and signifying their position as they circled around her hiding spot. Her back was pressed to one of the many shelves in the room and her heart was pounding in her chest so loud she was sure they would hear, but slowly the voices and feet of the agents quieted until the closing of a door far off signalled their exit. Relief flooded through her veins and Robin breathed out an almost silent sigh as her shoulders relaxed and her head dropped slightly. For a moment, she even convinced herself that everything was going to work out, she didn't count on the agents leaving one man behind to continue searching.

"Hands up!" The rough male voice startled the redhead from her thoughts and her head snapped up as she was instantly put back on the defensive. Her amber eyes met a pair of soft brown down the barrel of a gun as one of the agents stood before her with his handgun raised in her direction. His face was stern, though the laughter lines around his eyes and mouth hinted at a different side to him. His hair was dark, but silver was beginning to thread itself with the brunet strands as age slowly took it's toll on him. Without the gun, he might have appeared a nice man, the sort of fatherly type who told bad jokes and played helicopter with his kids every time they asked.

The wedding band on his left hand made Robin hesitate.

"Please, just leave. Pretend like you didn't see me." Not often did Robin sound so desperate, she never begged for anything, but in that moment she hoped that her soft plea wouldn't be ignored by this agent. He looked at her with confusion, probably wondering why she would even bother asking him to leave when his job clearly was to take her in. If only he knew she was asking him to move on for his benefit and not her own. The agent dropped one hand from the handgun and started to raise it to the walkie-talkie on his shoulder to radio the rest of his team, to give away Robin's position and ultimately get her killed. At least, that's what Robin always told herself to justify her actions each time it came down to this: it was out of defence, it was for the greater good, she just had to do it—

It was all a lie, though, just something to try and comfort herself with, sweet pleasantries that did nothing to soften the bitter reality. Truth was, she did it because it was all she knew; after The Citadel she wasn't the same anymore and there was no use trying to deny it. Robin was a monster, but at least she was too numb to let the guilt swallow her.

 _[ ]_

Elsewhere, Megan had taken a similar route to that of Robin, though she remained downstairs and headed down a corridor that seemed a little more barren in terms of there only being clear space with metallic doors leading off into something that Megan had found out was a rather large garage; somewhere that they kept some pretty nifty looking things that had held her attention long enough for the small amount of men following her to gather some further intel on her identity and location. They found her rapping her hands along the roof of a rather expensive SUV, seeming to not care all that much for their presence as she continued her actions with very little attention paid towards them; many would have believed that it'd be safe to approach the woman and even arrest her, and these agents were no different—fanning out and aiming their firearms at her small frame.

The leading agent mocked her, "Guess your little revolution chose the wrong duo to take on the government, huh?" Megan recognised his voice; one of the few agents who had lasted longer than a couple of seconds against her, though that was purely because he kept running from the brunette whenever things got a little too heated for his preference. She had let him run, deciding that he wasn't worth her effort if all he did was flee back into the arms of the government; but she decided she would entertain him a little tonight. "I mean, splitting up? You couldn't have honestly thought that was a good idea, right?" He continued, drawing a small shrug from Megan as she lowered her hands back down.

"Dunno, it saved you the embarrassment of being mocked by my partner." Megan replied as she turned to face the men, holding her hands up to show that she held nothing in them but the nothingness that seemed to please the humankind when attempting to arrest one of their kind. She allowed the leading agent to laugh, as it seemed to ease his nerves that were beginning to build while she continued to watch them; waiting for the perfect moment to strike out without restraint, as she didn't have the artefact that would have made her move differently and with more care since it was a very important item to their so-called revolution at the moment. When the laughter calmed a little, Megan allowed a calm and lopsided smile to find her face; once again lowering her hands and tucking them behind her back as she started to approach the men without hesitance.

Orders were shouted for her to halt, but that only prompted laughter from the brunette; and then she was being shot with bullets that might have hurt her had she been there, but instead she stood with two fingers—index and middle—on each hand pressed to her temples as she concentrated. It took the agents quite some time to figure out that they hadn't killed a Tomorrow Person and had instead provoked a powerful one instead, but before any of them could locate and properly destroy her; their bodies dropped to the floor and everything seemed to fade into black, the electricity in the room becoming zilch and the response from the agents becoming nothing more than tired and confused moans.

It took approximately five minutes for the power to switch back on, seeming to reoccur only after a loud bang sounded in the room and a soft blue mist had washed over the entirety of the space; and by the time those sitting around in their business suits and pencil skirts had managed to get their cameras and microphones responding, Megan had already teleported from the room and they had lost one of their top agents to suicide, as he held his own handgun and the inside of his mouth was completely destroyed from where a bullet had travelled through it; his men were laying around him, asleep—they seemed to be lost in their own little dreamworlds and that worried those watching them.

Meanwhile, Megan had stepped from the garage into the corridor that her partner was sitting in; seemingly forgetting where they were as she stared at the man who had been undoubtedly demanding that she hold her hands up and forget about escaping. Megan could hardly breathe as she stumbled towards the other, her head pounding from her own confrontation as she knelt behind the redhead, pulling the other so that they were facing each other; Robin held a look to her eyes that made Megan pause momentarily, considering their choices as she looked down at the man—it took her a little under a minute to notice the wedding ring and she closed her eyes, sighing.

"It couldn't be avoided, Robin." She told the woman, who only nodded a little in agreement; expressing a completely different side to the one that was usually apathetic or blunt. The man laying behind them was still, his chest rising and falling; but even if someone shot him, there would be no response from the exterior shell of who he had once been—it was clear that Robin was deeply bothered by the fact that the man was married, so adding that little horror on top of the nightmarish feeling that found her after she did what she did to those who frightened or angered her greatly; Megan grimaced at the thought of what Robin was most likely feeling now, even if she knew the redhead would return back to her usual state after she had been given some time to process and toss it to the back of her mind again. Upstairs, she could hear the scuffle of military boots and this prompted Megan to hurry with her examination of Robin; she didn't seem to be too injured on the outside, she was still carrying the artefact—but she seemed to be incapable of standing without stumbling, which was less than what Megan had expected as they once again slumped back to the ground after a second try of pulling Robin up to her feet.

As the scuffling got closer, Megan made her task of checking for anything that would prevent them from teleporting quick and eventually returned to Robin, who still remained on the floor; but she seemed to be watching Megan carefully and with some amount of worry, as if she was nervous that Megan would just leave her here and allow them to take her back to the Citadel to perform even more tests on her body and mind—as if she would allow the former men of her father to experiment and hurt her once again. Megan frowned as she rejoined Robin on the floor, making sure she had everything that could act as evidence for their physical presence in the building until their friends back in New York managed to wipe the recorded evidence of their presence there, before she took a tight hold on one of Robin's shoulders; located a camera off into the corner of the space, flipped it her middle finger and then teleported them from the hideout as the doors were thrown open by men dressed in more protective gear—they missed each other barely.

The teleportation went smoother than expected, Robin found herself landing on her bed with Megan missing the bed by a couple of inches and instead almost breaking the closet; it brought a small smile to Robin's face to see Megan land so clumsily, though she couldn't help but worry that the brunette had hurt herself when she took her time in moving. However, when Megan finally moved and assured Robin that she was fine; the redhead nodded and simply sat up a little with some struggle, placing the bagged artefact into her bedside table and then returning to lay back down onto the comfy piece of furniture that Megan had all but stolen for her—she had used her father's money without his consent, a fact that Robin had learnt only after they had build the frame, bought the mattress and decorated the bed with a cute quilt and many different cushions. Robin shook her head at the memory of demanding that Megan take it back, which only prompted the drug addict to shrug her shoulders in response and mutter that she couldn't be bothered to do so. She had almost completely relaxed into her cushions and quilt when she remembered something very important: Megan's father was unconscious and beaten in their apartment.

However, Robin couldn't bring herself to get up and take care of the situation when she heard Megan leaving the room; she would have followed and demanded the brunette to explain why the hell she had brought her homicidal and dangerous father to their home, except she was once again stopped when she heard Megan through both her mind and the somewhat thin walls—the brunette was kneeling on the floor by the sofa with her eyes focused on his carefully rising and falling chest and she was talking to him, telling him that she had prioritised him today because she wasn't ready to be an orphan yet; that she wanted to see him in a different light from the enemies that seemed to surround him. He seemed to have shifted or responded in some form, because Megan seemed to become a helluva lot happier than she had been in a few months; she giggled and closed her mind away from Robin, which drew a petulant pout onto the redhead's lips as she closed her eyes and attempted to focus on Megan's mind—hoping to see what she was doing in the minutes before she went to sleep, but it seemed Megan had already beaten her to it; she had rested her head upon the man's chest and was snoring softly, already asleep.

Robin narrowed her eyes at the strained image and cleared it from her mind, staring into the darkness that filled her room; Megan would get both a neck and back ache if she slept like that, and Robin was going to have fun poking sarcastic comments at that once she had collected her own experiences and processed them. However, she would do that in the morning, as a quick look to her clock said it was a couple of minutes past midnight and she wanted to get an hour or two of sleep in before she was stopped once again; so she closed her eyes and tried to relax. She needed to do this now, because there was no way she was relaxing after their newest guest woke up; it just wouldn't be happening, even if she would need her strength to deal with Megan on the regular basis—both when it came down to her father and when it came down to her addiction. Robin frowned, knowing that the next couple of weeks were going to be anything but fun and she wasn't all that excited for it.

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 **A/N: This is what happens when you create a RP forum, find a new friend & make them watch a TV show that you adore. I have zero regrets, oops. **

**So yes, hello! This is going to be an incredibly OC-centred and controlled story with the addition of The Founder, because I'm still incredibly salty as to how the hell they ended the TV show and wanted to write a story that completely changed the ending and instead focused on another Shadow War. This is also a collab with _HailHathNoFury_ and I highly suggest you go check out her Daredevil story, because it's honestly awesome; I feel like I'm going to enjoy writing with Fury, because we're both totally down for all of the ideas. Whoops.**

 **I hope you enjoyed this chapter, reviews are appreciated; but don't feel pressured. x**


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